DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee Confirms That The 5G Reboot Ageing Up Its Heroes Is No Longer Happening

DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee Confirms That The 5G Reboot Ageing Up Its Heroes Is No Longer Happening

DC Comics was once planning a "5G" reboot which would have aged up the DC Universe's heroes and introduced younger counterparts, but Publisher Jim Lee has now explained why that's no longer happening...

News
By JoshWilding - Sep 14, 2020 04:09 AM EST
Filed Under: DC Comics
Source: DC FanDome

Some time ago, we learned that DC Comics was planning a 5G ("Generation 5") reboot which was set to once again shake up the DC Universe. Controversially, this newly launched timeline would have seen all the major characters aged up, with Jonathan Kent as the new Superman, Luke Fox the new Batman, and Captain Cold Jr. the new Flash (to name just a few examples). 

While that may have initially attracted new readers, it likely would have aliened a lot of long-time fans and hurt sales, similar to what happened when Marvel Comics made certain "legacy" heroes the new Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor. While their introduction gave Marvel Studios plenty of new options, it didn't take long for the original versions to make their return. 

During this weekend's DC FanDome, DC Comics Publisher Jim Lee made it clear that 5G is "not going to happen." He explains, "there won't be a project called '5G', or a big reboot, or whatever. We really want to focus on individual titles, and organically build up individual characters over the course of the next year."

"We had a lot of great ideas that we were floating around," Lee explains. "And rather than dumping it all in one month and renumbering the line and going for that really short term spike in sales, we just naturally gravitated to the story ideas and concepts we love and building them into the mythology, the ongoing mythology, in a very organic way."

One example of what Lee is talking about is the Batman limited series John Ridley is writing which will follow Luke Fox's Batman in an alternate DC Universe (continuity is no longer being strictly adhered to, likely to make titles easier for readers to follow without feeling the need to buy a dozen books). 

Needless to say, it should be interesting to see how DC Comics' plan continues to develop.

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Saintsinnister
Saintsinnister - 9/14/2020, 4:47 AM
It seems they are learning?!
mastakilla39
mastakilla39 - 9/14/2020, 5:20 AM
@Saintsinnister - More like after downsizing due to terrible sales, they dont have the resources anymore.

RIP DC Comics
patgreyc
patgreyc - 9/14/2020, 6:21 AM
@mastakilla39 - Thank you for dumping the idea DC, but, unfortunately, I fear you are right. Marvel's sales have been slumping as well, I don't think they will be far behind.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 7:02 AM
@patgreyc - I honestly think this might be the beginning of the end for them.

The writing's been on the wall for some time now.

They needed a plan to counter their oncoming Doom. Death Metal and Didio's 5G WAS that plan.

Now, much like Walter Hamada's film division, their plan is to have no plan. To just keep throwing shit at the wall and hoping for the best.

I give them five years.
patgreyc
patgreyc - 9/14/2020, 7:59 AM
@GwenLantern - To be fair it was a good run, almost 90 years, but the market has changed so much in that time. If they can get their act together in those 5 years, maybe, just maybe, they might be able to pull up from this impending crash.
dracula
dracula - 9/14/2020, 11:06 AM
@Saintsinnister - wonder how far they got on it, if they have any stories plotted out, might make for some good elseworlds
Saintsinnister
Saintsinnister - 9/14/2020, 2:34 PM
@mastakilla39 - It’s amazing to see the talent that goes into these book artistically. I still read digital comics, but only pick up hard copies of the really good stuff. I would hate to see comics go altogether, but they have saturated the market for years. They can downscale and focus on Fewer, but better stories.
Saintsinnister
Saintsinnister - 9/14/2020, 2:37 PM
@dracula - Yeah who knows. They should focus on stuff the fans actually want. A bunch of the unused scripts from movies like Burtons Batman 3 for example.
dracula
dracula - 9/14/2020, 2:44 PM
@Saintsinnister - how about the original superman 3 script, that had brainiac, supergirl and mxyzpitlik
aresww3
aresww3 - 9/22/2020, 12:56 AM
@Saintsinnister - they should just do graphic novels and stop with two weekly shit.
tmp3
tmp3 - 9/14/2020, 4:50 AM
Dan Didio's tenure was filled with so many disasters. One of the funniest parts of the (very good) Watchmen panel from FanDome 2: Electric Boogaloo was Tom King mentioning how Didio kept insisting that he do a Rorschach comic book, with no regard to how that'd work considering the original book. I feel like 5G was shaping up to be another big blow, so maybe keeping it simple was for the best.
99OPTIMISTPRIME
99OPTIMISTPRIME - 9/14/2020, 5:04 AM
@tmp3 - Dan DiDio was just a really bad business man. He cared too much about his own preferences, and not enough about fan/customer satisfaction.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 6:35 AM
@99OPTIMISTPRIME - He cared too much about creative freedom and not enough about continuity. Until 5G. Then they fired him for suddenly caring and having a solid plan to fix everything AND sell books.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 6:58 AM
@tmp3 - Slightly OT news about that Rorschach book.

Don't know if you caught it, but King revealed that it would be set in the continuity of the TV show rather than Doomsday Clock and that it would take place directly afterwards.

So it looks like we are getting a sequel to the HBO show, after all, in comic form!
tmp3
tmp3 - 9/14/2020, 7:03 AM
@GwenLantern - Well, he said it wouldn't contradict the show, not so much that it's a direct sequel. Partially because he was such a huge fan of it, that he made it a conscious decision. It sounded like he was dunking on Doomsday Clock too, haha:

Either way I'm pretty hyped for this. Gonna assume HiC and Batman were bumps in part due to bad editorial, since Strange Adventures was a return to form and this sounds like it'll be solid too
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 7:16 AM
@tmp3 - Ha, ha! He was for real throwing shade at Johns there, I missed that the first time around.

I gotta say he's a solid writer. His last two or three of Batman stories were pretty bad, but he would've been reading all the shit on the internet that we all gave him about the wedding issue at that point and it probably threw him of his game.
Origame
Origame - 9/14/2020, 4:52 AM
I think thats for the best. Luke fox isnt batman and jonathan kent isnt superman. Even with miles morales they still maintained the status quo (eventually) with peter still as spiderman. Just make these characters new superheroes.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 6:36 AM
@Origame - Sure. Another white victory.
marvel72
marvel72 - 9/14/2020, 6:41 AM
@Origame - Exactly let the reader decide if they want to read them.

Are people gonna buy Batman if he's black? No because they want to read Bruce Wayne.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 6:54 AM
@marvel72 - There was still gonna be a Bruce Wayne Batman in the reboot. It was a big timeline sectioned into 5 seperate generations.

There would have been Generations 2-3 books featuring Bruce Wayne as Batman.

And some people WOULD have bought Batman BECAUSE he was black.

I would've bought it because of how brilliant a writer John Ridley is.
marvel72
marvel72 - 9/14/2020, 6:56 AM
@GwenLantern - That's OK then as long as they keep the originals, I don't have to buy the other crap.
Origame
Origame - 9/14/2020, 9:12 AM
@GwenLantern - its better for everyone. With black batman you're getting a minority character thats only relevant because of the stories and success of a white character. How about making a new character? Not to mention the hypocrisy of cheering when minorities assume roles usually for white characters, yet the opposite is white washing, which is problematic.
Origame
Origame - 9/14/2020, 9:15 AM
@marvel72 - yeah. Why not just have luke fox take a mech suit his dads working on and make him into like a dc iron man or something. And keep jonathan kent as superboy. They found a nice place with that.
dracula
dracula - 9/14/2020, 11:10 AM
@GwenLantern - is there really any reason to make Luke Fox Batman, he is Batwing, his new 52 book lasted a decent amount of time so just revive that. Not saying a black batman cant happen, but yeah how different is it going to be just taking another hero and giving him the batman name. Not like Batwing is a bad character or name
99OPTIMISTPRIME
99OPTIMISTPRIME - 9/14/2020, 5:01 AM

Rebirth WAS the reboot!😂 It's not rocket science. Take the best stuff from all of the eras of DC history, and try to combine them as best you can. The main problem with The New 52, is that it never had a chance of replicating or surpassing the post-Crisis era. Overall, the writers were better then, fan investment was way higher, most of the characters were successfully developed/defined during that period, and so many iconic DC stories were written during that time. Instead of trying to compete with that history, you have to incorporate it, so that the new stuff can have a strong foundation to build off of.
GwenLantern
GwenLantern - 9/14/2020, 6:41 AM
@99OPTIMISTPRIME - Rebirth is the biggest fvcking mess in DC's history.

I love it. More than any version of DC since the Post-Crisis/Pre-Zero Hour stuff, but it is a fvcking mess. It reboots itself every two seconds, hypertime is broken, nobody knows what the fvck is going on, stories keep changing, people keep getting fired... It's four-color bedlam.

Not a good business plan for a faltering company needing to let-in new readers.

It's anti-new readers.
TheUnworthyThor
TheUnworthyThor - 9/14/2020, 5:25 AM
Reeds2Much
Reeds2Much - 9/14/2020, 5:44 AM
Now they just need to One More Day Bendis and bring back the Super Shotas.
dracula
dracula - 9/14/2020, 11:13 AM
@Reeds2Much - retcon what Bendis did to Jon, but how about having it be revealed that the jon that came back to earth is actually the son of Earth 3 ultraman and superwoman and jon is still trapped on earth 3
KingMob20
KingMob20 - 9/14/2020, 11:33 AM
@dracula - ooh I like that idea!
TheUnworthyThor
TheUnworthyThor - 9/14/2020, 5:51 AM
I don’t want to see all the heroes replaced on a permanent basis, I love all the classic characters, a lot of the rumors about 5G sounded stupid but you can’t act like Marvel’s legacy heroes was some kind of disaster. In the MCU Falcon got the shield and Jane Foster is going to be a Thor, meanwhile Miles Morales got a movie and a video game, some of these things worked and people like them. Eventually you have to return to the status quo, I’m glad Eric Masterson isn’t still Thor and Bucky isn’t Captain America. But in the short term they can be fun interesting stories.

I just hate the continuing downsizing of DC Comics. They have so many great heroes. Just so much potential. Characters people will love. But ever increasingly it just seems they concentrate on their biggest of the biggest characters and everyone else be damned.
CorndogBurglar
CorndogBurglar - 9/14/2020, 6:15 AM
@TheUnworthyThor - The problem with the Marvel legacy characters was how overly cringe-worthy it was and how obvious it was that Marvel was trying to play the diversity angle.

They removed all the white male characters at the same time. Hulk was an Asian teenager. Thor was a woman. Wolverine was a woman. Iron Man was a black teenage female. Captain America was a black man. Spider-Man was half black, half latino.

I'm all for diversity, but make them their own characters. It was all so forced with Marvel. I don't even mind a person of a different race taking the mantle for a while. Rhodey as Iron Man back in the day was awesome. Falcon-Cap was great. But they served a good story also.

When you take ALL the most popular characters and race/sex swap them at the same time you are no longer doing whats best for the story or characters. You are trying to make a point. And going about it the wrong way.

In fact, I would imagine its pretty insulting to think that people of race can only excel and be successful by piggy-backing off of already successful white characters.

Thats just me though.
TheUnworthyThor
TheUnworthyThor - 9/14/2020, 6:26 AM
@CorndogBurglar - Whether someone likes the stories that are being told is up to them, I thought some were good, some were bad. Obviously they were forced, everyone creative decision is by it’s very nature a decision, but it was also obviously always going to be temporary. If I had a dollar for every issue of a comic I read about someone new taking up the mantle of an established hero...I could buy a lot more comics. I thought it was fine, kind of cool to see all these new heroes in the roles all at once for a change, rather than one at a time. I didn’t want it to become the new status quo. By the end I was itching for the classic heroes to come back. But now those stories exist. Now those heroes exist. And the potential of the world is expanded.
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